Music

The Best Moments of Glastonbury Festival 2015

This past Sunday marked the end of Glastonbury Festival 2015. The five-day music festival hosts artists from all genres and attracts as many as 175,000 visitors every year, making it a musical mecca for festival-goers. The line-up included appearances from Pharrell Williams, Alt-J, Deadmau5 and many more. Here are the top five things you missed.

Pussy Riot Rips on The Man

Pussy Riot kicked off Glastonbury with an explosive piece of performance art. Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova, two members of the Russian punk-rock protest group, parked a huge military truck in the middle of Kidzfield and proceeded to figuratively flip-off Russian President, Vladimir Putin. A man clad in pro-Russian separatists gear climbed to the top of the truck and declared the establishment of the “Galstonbury people’s republic.” Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were not having any of his shit, so they jumped on top of the truck and screeched, “Fuck you with your fucking guns!” From there they hogtied the soldier with tape and covered his face in a rainbow-colored ski mask. There’s nothing better than watching a couple of punk-rock vixens beat down The Man.

Florence + The Machine Steps in for The Foo Fighters

After The Foo Fighters’ front man, Dave Grohlbroke his leg on stage during a gig in Sweden, the band was forced to cancel their headline show on Friday. Florence + The Machine stepped up to take their place as the final show on the Pyramid Stage, and Miss Welch did not disappoint. The stage, quite literally, could not contain her energy, as she repeatedly jumped into the swarm of people there to see her and yelled at the crowd to hop on their friends’ shoulders. She even asked the raging audience if they all wanted to get high, which prompted a resounding ‘HELL YES!’. Welch performed most of the songs from her most recent album, How Big How Blue How Beautiful. Her extensive arsenal of undoubtable great songs coupled with her sheer enthusiasm made this set one of Glastonbury’s most energetic. To top it all off, she dedicated a cover of The Foo Fighters’ Times Like These to Grohl.

The Libertines’ Surprise Reunion

Carl Barat and Pete Doherty, the two frontmen of British indie-rock band The Libertines, stormed the stage Friday night and performed a surprise show. After a day of speculation on who would replace Florence Welch’s former set time, the lads sprinted onto stage and sprayed the crowd with a few Heinekens. The duo had a famously rocky friendship in the past, but seemed to put those feelings aside while they shared the stage this weekend. Their set was filled with nostalgic tunes, reminiscent of the early ‘00s – the only difference between then and now was an absent Kate Moss.

Kanye Gets Kanye’d

This list would not be complete without one of the most controversial sets in Glastonbury history. Kanye, Yeezus, Ye, or whatever you want to call him took to the Pyramid Stage as Saturday night’s headliner. A few weeks earlier the anti-Yeezy community started an online petition in an attempt to cancel the MC’s set, to no avail. They even went as far as printing a scene from Mrs. West’s ancient sex tape on a flag. Kanye didn’t call out any of the haters during his show, instead he just let his bars do the work as he strutted around under all of those lights. While the rapper was half way through ‘Black Skinheads’ British comedian, Lee Nelson gave Kanye a taste of his own medicine by stage-crashing the show to avenge Taylor Swift. Ye turned around and gave a quick ‘WTF MAN’-look to security which got Nelson pushed off stage. The comedian later tweeted, “I Kanye’d Kanye. That was for you @taylorswift13.”

The Dalai Lama’s First Festival

Before Lionel Richie stepped on stage to soothe our souls with some R&B, singer-songwriter Patti Smith invited one of Glastonbury’s most unexpected visitors, the Dalai Lama, onto stage to wish him a happy 80th birthday. Smith greeted the Tibetan spiritual leader with a fruit-covered cake and the audience all joined in and sang him ‘Happy Birthday.’ The Dalai Lama used his time at the music festival to address climate change and how everyone in attendance could help the cause. This was the first festival that the spiritual leader has ever attended. Monks can party pretty hard too.